


Familiar Faces

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Blow Jobs, Canon verse, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Glory Hole, M/M, Rickyl Writer's Group, Season 2/3 Gap, Skari's BD!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 03:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4812980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick accidentally sees Daryl naked. The funny thing, though, is that he’s seen that particular dick before...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familiar Faces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skarlatha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/gifts).



> This fic is for the beautiful, the wonderful, the only [Skarlatha](http://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha) on her birthday! It was a prompt she put up a while ago: pre-apocalypse glory hole! Hope you like it! 
> 
> And thanks to the Rickyl Writer's Group for their help in making this fic become a thing! As always, stay cool!

Relatively speaking, it takes Rick a long time before he sees Daryl’s cock. One would think that he would have seen it sooner--there isn’t such a thing as privacy in the apocalypse, especially with how hard they’ve been running during the winter. Every house is filled to the brim with bodies, every store and every gas station they’ve hold up in turned to a one-room camp that seems to perfectly fit the amount of people they have--no more, no less. And given that Rick has seen every other person switch clothing, every other person bathe or be doctored by Hershel for whatever has come their way, it seems rather _odd_ that he hasn’t seen Daryl.

He’s seen other parts, of course. At the farm, with Daryl shirtless, the crosscutting of the old scars topped by new ones with the arrow in his side, the bullet on his forehead. But even after that, Daryl has been a modest type of man. He’s never shown what he didn’t absolutely need to show. But then again, the apocalypse is a cruel mistress. And it doesn’t really matter how private of a person you are, things tend to happen. Cocks tend to be seen.

This particular incident is a complete accident--it all comes down to Rick taking a piss. And it just so happens that Rick has picked a particular oak tree by a particular creek where Daryl has particularly decided to sneak away from the house to get a bath in.

It’s kind of comical, really, the way everything freezes in that moment and the way they stare at each other, Rick with his hand on his zipper ready to pull down and Daryl with both hands in his hair, wringing out creek water. Rick blinks. Daryl blinks. Rick looks because of _course_ he does. Daryl grunts because he’s seen Rick look. Rick blushes. Daryl stammers. Rick stammers. And then there is tripping of feet and moving of hands down to cover modesty and rushing away and just really all-in-all the most embarrassing experience Rick has ever had.

It’s probably that rush of embarrassment that stops Rick from truely processing what he’s seen until he’s halfway back to the old shack they are calling home for the night. But when he finally _does_ clue in, he grinds to a halt. Nice and long, decently thick...and with a little birthmark to the right side that looks quite an awful lot like a rose. Fuck. _Fuck_. Fuck Rick in his _ass_. Because he’s seen that dick before. He’s seen it nice and up close. And of all the people in Georgia, of all the people in the _world_ , what a damned coincidence that the man he’d come to call friend--damn near family--is _also_ the man who stuck his dick in a glory hole five years ago and let Rick go to town on it. And isn’t that just perfect?

***

The name of the club was _Woody’s_ , which Rick and Shane had gotten a damn good laugh at as they sped to their call downtown, intent on arresting the gaggle of gays that apparently thought it was a good idea to set up a meth-dealing business right in the middle of the public dancing section at the most popular, and let’s face it, _only_ gay club in town. Beside him, Shane kept going on and on about how the damned homosexual population was taking over and Rick, for the most part, tuned him out. Rick was by now accepting of his own little slice of homosexuality and while he had never gotten brave enough to even try anything, he was absolutley certain that dicks could turn him on. But if Shane wanted to sit over there and bitch about rainbows and tight jeans and flippy wrists and all the other stereotypical bullshit, then whatever. Rick didn’t have the energy to fight with him.

What he _did_ have the energy for, though, was excitement. He knew by this point in time in his life, he would never really explore the alternative side of himself. He’d signed that away when he’d married Lori. And so he would never set foot in _Woody’s_ now, not in his civilian life anyway. And so it was thrilling to know that he would be inside the club, that he could observe it, if only through his professional eyes. And, if a part of him was elated that this was in some small way giving the finger to Lori and her goddamn _attitude_ as of late, then that was fine as well. With how they’d been fighting, he didn’t even know why he was trying anymore.

And so when Shane pulled the car onto the side of the curb, lights angrily flashing, Rick hopped out with a little spring to his step. And when they busted the door in and got three of the four dealers, he grinned to himself under the strobing sounds of the techno music. And when another cop car joined them in arresting and when Shane took off after dealer number four and Rick was suddenly in the way of the other three officers, well, he didn’t pout about it. He simply slipped away under the pretenses of “investigating the scene.”

He gave the club a good round tour--wandering through the bar section, the tables, the dancing area set aside in the middle. After hitting all the obvious things, he curved to the outside walls, began moving in and out of spaces in a fast, but exploratory motion until he quickly found himself in a corner private section, walled off by velvet curtaining, his ass sitting on a fucking fantastically comfortable couch. In retrospect, he should have sensed that something was amiss, but it took about five minutes and a dick popping through a hole in the wall at about chin level for him to figure it all out. “Oh!” he said to the room, empty save for Rick and the dick currently staring him half-hard in the face.

Later, Rick would feel great shame at how little time it took him to decide what to do with the glory hole, but at that present moment he was living high on the what-ifs of how his alternative life could have been and things like Lori and his job and common decency didn’t really register in the depths of his brain that were currently alight with new and exciting possibilities. And really, it looked like a nice cock.

So Rick touched it.

It twitched in his hand and he could hear the barest groans from its owner coming through the wall, mostly muffled by the club music and the thudding of Rick’s own heart. Two warring emotions set up within Rick--the first telling him to get the hell out of the town’s _gay club_ and be faithful to his wife and the second, far stronger and meaner, telling him to suck that fucker, because would he ever get another chance?

Rick wasn’t particularly proud of his own actions, but he guessed he maybe should have been by the groaning from the wall as Rick stroked up and made a particularly nice swirling motion with his thumb when he got to the head. Deciding he was completely and thoroughly in, Rick tossed his hat off into the corner and leaned forward to study the thing. He’d seen other cocks at a distance--of course he had--but he’d never gotten the opportunity to really study one up close. But this one, _damn_ , this one was _pretty_ , the skin a nice even color, the length well above average, and the thickness a perfect kind of balance. Rick held it in his hand and stroked, tilting his head this way and that, taking in all the details. As he moved, it got harder in his hand, flushed itself out more, and he took in a rather unique and quite endearing detail--a birthmark in the shape of a rose, on the right side and up close near the base.

It looked so damned cute that Rick just _had_ to lick it and so he did, leaned forward and ran his tongue along the edges of it, tracing the shape that was just slightly darker than all the rest. The man on the other side groaned again and pushed himself forward closer to the wall than he already was. And that just made Rick smile, just encouraged him on and chased all the thoughts in his mind away--thoughts of the police cars waiting outside, thoughts of Lori, thoughts of modest actions and even thoughts of where had this dick been? Whose dick was he licking?

But none of that mattered, because above the den of the club, Rick heard the barest gasp of “ _Jesus_ ,” from a voice that was southern rough and all kinds of good gravel and if Rick could drag that noise from the man’s throat again, then he was damn well going to do everything in his power to make it happen. And so he opened his mouth, moved forward, and closed his lips over the tip.

The man on the other side bucked forward, smacked his pelvis into the wall, and Rick felt a warm sensation of pride flutter through his veins at how even his inexperience could bring out such a strong reaction. And that deserved a reward, he thought, and then gave one, pulling the head into his mouth and then taking the dick further in, letting it sit heavy on his tongue. He took in the smell of the other man, heady and rough, somewhat woodsy and all natural, all strong _male_.

Rick moaned to himself, deep in the back of his throat and it was reciprocated in the small twitches of the man in his mouth. Rick began moving, started up a small rhythm, punctuated only by brief moments when he would pull off to swirl his tongue over the head or run it over the underside, push it into the vein he found there. He was acutely aware of how hard he was in his own pants, how straining, and despite the fact that he wanted to reach in and touch, wanted to bring himself to completion, he didn’t. Because there was something in the fact of waiting, something in the delicious tingle of resisting temptation and so instead he kept his hands busy on what was in front of him, stroking the base that he couldn’t fit into his mouth. His extra hand he brought to the hole where the man was sticking through and slide two fingers inside to make the fit tighter, but also to touch what he could get of the other man’s balls, run his finger over what he could reach on the other side.

  
And the guy, for his part, was pushing forward, had begun now to hump the wall in front of him. Rick closed his eyes as he closed his mouth over the cock again and tried to imagine what the man looked like. Would he have blonde hair or would he be a brunette? Short cropped or long and tangled around his face? What would his eyes be--green like the earth or blue like summer rain? The infinite possibilities tickled at Rick’s mind, made him twitch within his pants.

“‘M close,” the man grunted and Rick snapped his eyes open like it was a divine command. His voice was still rough, still gravely, but muted over the sound of the club music. Rick suddenly wished with a fire in him to hear it cut through silence, to hear its proper and full tone. Because now, right now, it sounded like a creek cutting through the forest, but removed like factory packaging--a CD of nature and not nature itself and _damn_ , did Rick want to hear its purest form, the bubbling of water as it cascaded across rock.

The man thrust forward again, hitting the wall with a dull thump and that brought Rick back to attention. Close. He was _close_. And fuck did Rick have a decision to make. But much like the first decision he had chosen when he saw the thing pop through the wall, this was one easy as well. Because the thought of not finishing him, of not _tasting_ what was in front of him, of never knowing what it was like to have another man splash across his tongue filled Rick with a fire of regret that he wasn’t prepared to carry with him.

So he took him deeper, brought him into his mouth and created as much pressure as he could by the hollowing out of his cheeks. And that did it, that tipped the scales. The man moaned loudly and Rick perked his ears, drank in the sound so that he could memorize it for all those nights when he was alone. The dick within his mouth twitched and then emptied, shot forth and spread across Rick’s tongue and Rick moaned at the feel of it, caught up in the strong sensational taste. Rick took it until it was done and then watched in sadness as the man pulled back, heard the thump of his feet as they retreated.

Rick turned to the side of the couch and spit, rationality suddenly hitting him like ice water. What the _fuck_ had he done? He wiped the corners of his mouth off and tried to still the panic growing in his gut. He had no idea who the man was, no idea how _often_ he did this and what he might have caught _while_ doing this. And more than that, what had he done to his profession? He could get in so much fucking trouble over this--running from a crime scene to fucking suck a dude off. And then there was Lori. He shut that down quick. He didn’t want to even think of her.

He sat for a second on the overly comfortable couch, his dick still hard between his legs. He refused to touch it and willed it to go down, but it didn’t, not then and not when he finally told himself he had to stand, not in the awkward cop ride back to the station and not until he was finally home in his own driveway, the scent of the club wafting off in the cool fall air, his wife waiting just inside.

***

A different day, a different year, a far different situation, but Lori is still waiting in the living room and Rick can’t really bear to look at her. Of course, that has nothing to do with Daryl, nothing to do with _Woody’s_ or how the gay now sits heavy on his tongue in reminder. It’s all them, pure and simple, just Rick and Lori and how they are over, completely done, but how there’s still that baby that knits them together, still Carl.

But he can’t think about that today. He has far other pressing matters on his mind and his destroyed marriage will always be there, whether he thinks about it or not. Lori, despite the fact that they haven’t touched in months, despite the fact that Rick so much as told her that he’s done, will always be part of the family, same as Carol or Glenn, but that doesn’t make it easier. But fuck, he can’t get into that now. So he takes the thirty seconds he was hoping to get at the oak tree by a pine near the house and then crawls inside, avoids Lori like the plague and settles down in a walk-in closet that’s the only bit of peace in this house.

It’s two hours later when someone else slides in and Rick doesn’t even have to look up to tell it’s Daryl. They all know each other by now, inside and out. Rick can tell by the sound of the footsteps and just the cast of the shadow on the floor that it’s not T-Dog or Maggie or Carol. No, it’s the man he knows the most and probably also the least, given that he would never have pegged Daryl for a glory hole user.

Daryl shuts the door behind him and sits with it to his back, his only greeting a flicker of his eyes in Rick’s direction. Daryl chews on his lip, but doesn’t say anything for a long time. When he does, it’s quiet and gruff and Rick has to swallow back a moan at how he can now put _Daryl’s_ voice into the man behind the wall’s, now knows like he’s always wanted to the way that voice laughs, the way it whispers, the way it shouts and sings and grunts and grumbles.

“Let’s just forget it,” the voice tells him, cutting into his thoughts. “Accidental shit you just forget.”

Rick blinks and stares at Daryl’s head, bowed toward his knees that are bent up, feet flat on the floor. His arms are across them, hands dangling and Rick suddenly wants to slink forward, as quick as a snake, and take those fingers into his mouth, take everything of Daryl’s into him. Because a possibility is suddenly open that never was before. Rick has him in front of him, has _the man_ that he’s always wanted to meet, the guy who he’s always wanted to see, sitting right there across from him and it’s stupid and it’s immature to think that something like a club room glory hole could be destiny, but Rick can’t shake the feeling boiling in his gut that maybe it is.

“Where were you,” Rick asks, “on the fourth of October five years ago?”

Daryl slowly lifts his head, brow furrowed. “ _What_?”

Rick grunts. “Where were you?” Rick repeats. “October 4th, 2010. At about, I don’t know, say...11:30 p.m.”

Daryl arches an eyebrow at Rick. “That’s pretty fucking specific.”

“Yeah,” Rick clips. “I know. Because I know where _I_ was. I was downtown. In a little club named _Woody’s_. Ring a bell?”

Daryl blinks and then Rick watches as his face loses all color, drains down into his chest. “Uh…” he stammers, but Rick decides to push on.

“How often did you go there, Daryl?” he asks and can’t quite keep the spitting tone out of his voice, the jealousy and the loathing that he’s just one of many. “How often you get your dick sucked?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Daryl grunts out and brings his hand up to rub at his eyes. Rick blinks and thinks back to the first time he heard that word in that voice--a meeting far older than any roadside running from any walker.

Daryl grumbles and doesn’t speak, but Rick waits him out. He wants to hear it, wants to _know_ how many numbers of men there are that are now his direct competition. He wants to know how many throats Daryl has finished down. But when Daryl finally _does_ speak, the answer is surprising. “One.”

Rick blinks. “ _One_?”

“One.”

“How could there be only _one_?”

“It’s not like it was a fucking hobby, Rick,” Daryl snaps at him with narrowed eyes. “It was...just the once. I just wanted to know if...if what I thought about myself was right.”

“Was it?” Rick asks.

“Yeah,” Daryl says with a sigh. “Fucking flammer. But what about _you_ , huh? How many dicks _you_ sucked, Rick?”

Rick slides his eyes away and shrugs. “Just one,” he admits, picking at a thread on his pants and ignoring the thrilling singing of electricity shooting up through his veins that maybe despite the venue, it _was_ a chance meeting.

It’s Daryl’s turn to blink in surprise. “One.”

“One.”

“One?”

“One.”

“You are kidding me,” Daryl says with a scoff. “I went to a gay club _once_ and _you_ went there once at the _same time_ and you...you sucked me off?”

“Yeah,” Rick admits with a shrug. “I guess so. Your birthmark’s pretty recognizable.”

Daryl grunts and frowns. “So...so what do we fucking do about that?”

Rick frowns and stares at the empty hanging rod above his head. “No idea.” But he has tons of ideas, tons of thoughts swirling around inside of him. Which really don’t matter when you think about it because how could Daryl want him? How could something that seems so perfect actually work out? But still he asks, “You...you liked it?”

“Pssh,” Daryl says, “don’t have to ask me that. You know I liked it. Did...did _you_ like it?”

“Nearly came in my pants,” Rick admits. “So yeah. I liked it.”

“...’nough to do it again?”

Rick blinks and snaps his gaze to Daryl’s. Daryl is looking at him now, blue eyes dark and rippling like water cast about by the wind. “...do it again? You want me to suck you again?”

“Nah,” Daryl says and scoots himself closer so that they’re knee to knee, Daryl’s raised ones and Rick’s flat as he sits cross-legged, “figure that I owe you one, so it’s my turn.”

“Your turn?” Rick asks, dumbfounded, but his cock which gives a little jump of interest doesn’t have to have this explained to it.

“Sure,” Daryl says and puts his hand over Rick’s knees, splays his fingers out and starts sliding them up Rick’s legs. “Unless you don’t want to?”

“No,” Rick breathes, “no, I want to.”

“Good,” Daryl says, “because I’m kind of itching for it.” And then, with hardly any warning, Daryl leans forward through the expanse that separates them and his lips land softly against Rick’s. Rick gasps at the sensation, which gives Daryl the edge he needs to really kiss Rick, to tilt his head and have him, strong jaw and strong tongue sweeping Rick into a puddle of lust and want and need. Daryl brings his hand up, slides it firmly against Rick’s cheek and then down, over the curve of his throat and in, toward the dip as his neck spreads out into chest. “I went back for you,” Daryl whispers against his lips as he pulls up, stares at Rick so close that Rick is almost cross-eyed for it. “Back to the club. Thought about asking ever damn guy in there if it was him, but then I got wise and left. Felt so stupid standing there imagining that you’d be waiting for me, too. That you’d want to do something as dumb as date. When I didn’t even know who you were and the shot was one in a million anyway.”

“I thought about you,” Rick admits, whispers it to him. “I didn’t know who you were, but I thought about you.”

Daryl smiles, brilliant and wide and real. “Me, too.”

And then they’re back to kissing, Daryl back to diving inside, making Rick his and Rick realizes with a kind of crystal clear clarity that he probably had been since that first moment in that club. Because even without seeing, even without truly knowing who the other had been, something had past between them, some kind of spark that if Rick is real with himself had never been there with Lori and sure, yeah, it might be stupid, it might be incredibly dumb that something as kinky as a glory hole could have brought them here, but then again, here they are. Kissing. In the closet of an abandoned shack with all their family right outside.

“Got to be quiet,” Daryl tells him between kisses. “Can you be quiet? You look like a loud fucker to me.”

Rick laughs, breathless into Daryl’s mouth. “I can be anything you need,” Rick tells him, “long as your mouth is on my cock.”

Daryl chuckles back and gives him one firm last kiss. “Then better get to it, hadn’t I?”

He moves down Rick’s body, his eyes sparkling with mirth. His hands glide down Rick’s sides and then catch at his hips, pull until Rick slides down the floor onto his back, his legs falling open so Daryl’s body can lay in the crook of them. “You gave me the best blowjob of my life, you know,” Daryl tells him as his hands work defly at his belt. “No chick was _ever_ close.”

Rick barks out a laugh. “Pretty impressive given that it was my first one.”

“Well, this is _my_ first one,” Daryl tells him and goes for the button on his pants now that the belt is off. “So be kind.”

“And don’t fuck your mouth apart?”

Daryl chuckles. “Didn’t say that.” He pulls the zipper open and grabs the edges of Rick’s waistband, tugs them down gently until Rick springs free, hard and ready into the air. Daryl licks his lips. “That for me?”

“Has been for awhile,” Rick admits and Daryl gives him a tiny little wink that sends shivers down Rick’s spine.

“Remember,” Daryl says, “quiet.”

And then Daryl is upon him, licking at the head and taking Rick’s balls into his hand, holding them gently for the time being. Rick immediately groans loudly, already fucking up his only order. Daryl raises an eyebrow at him and Rick whispers _sorry_ and focuses on not humping up into Daryl’s mouth right from the get-go.

Daryl smiles with his eyes, just a crinkle of the corners as they narrow and moves forward on Rick, takes him in farther. He hollows his cheeks out as he does so and Rick blinks in fascination at how the motion highlights the highness of his cheekbones, the strong arch of them. Daryl’s tongue runs down the underside of Rick’s cock, dragging it in further to his mouth like some kind of ancient pulley system and Rick wonders just how long he has to wait before it doesn’t constitute embarrassing himself.

He settles now for throwing his head back and groaning. He figures if he keeps looking straight into the warm, swirling pools of Daryl’s eyes, it’ll be over in no time. So he props himself up on his elbows and studies the ceiling above him, the circular shape on one of the tiles that must be a leak from the outside. Below, in his lap, Daryl starts to bob his head and roll Rick’s balls around ever so carefully, just fucking _teasing_ at this point and Rick listens carefully to the sound of a second zipper, thinks about Daryl touching himself.

“Jesus, harder,” Rick whispers and Daryl chuckles around him, which causes Rick to shiver with want.

“Can fuck my mouth,” Daryl tells him as he pulls off briefly, strokes Rick in the absence of his lips. “Long as you’re quiet.”

Rick looks back down at him and swallows as his eyes meet Daryl’s, sex-lidded and pupils blown. Rick nods quickly and reaches down, pushes his fingertips into Daryl’s hair softly until his hand tangles inside to hold on. “Alright,” he says, noting how gravely his own voice has become. He lifts his hips to Daryl’s mouth. “Suck me,” he demands and with another chuckle, Daryl does.

He goes down and pulls Rick thoroughly in, his eyes sparkling as he does so. Rick uses the grip on Daryl’s hair to guide him and he starts pushing his hips up, starts really fucking into Daryl’s mouth, groaning at the feel of his cock as it slides again his tongue, the inside of his cheek, close to the back of his throat. Daryl has one hand down below, on himself, and is stroking to Rick’s rhythm, pulling himself closer and closer and that creates a cyclical motion of passion--Rick turned on by Daryl being turned on by him and so forth.

Rick gets louder and louder, his grunts turning into moans and soon, he has to slap his hand over himself and bite down on a finger to keep himself silent because Daryl feels so _good_ , so hot and wet and open for him and more than that, it’s Daryl’s _eyes_ boring into him like cattle brands, searing himself across the fiber of Rick’s being until Rick is sure that when he stands up from this, no one will be able to see him without seeing Daryl, that Daryl’s very essence will hover just above his skin like fog that burns in the sunlight of dawn.

Because there is marriage, the society instituted pack, and then there is _this_ , something grander, something above it all, something like the singing of his flesh for Daryl and Rick could always forget about Lori, always bury himself in something like work or hobbies or just the simple errands of the day the same as she could always forget about him, always toss him aside for something else. But this, _this_...Daryl is under his skin like the rushing of his blood, like his very nerve endings firing on and off, on and off, the same as Daryl’s mouth is now going on and off, on and off and he is a part of him more than anything ever will be, with something that is more binding, more branding, more solid than any broken thing like marriage.

“Is this forever?” Rick asks down to Daryl and _God, he is so stupid._ He bites his lip and grunts, tries to ignore the sentence that fell off his lips and hopes that Daryl will just let it go like the small little moans and sighs between them.

But he doesn’t. He pulls off with a little pop and has the audacity to smile. “Long as you want it,” he answers and grabs Rick’s hand, threads their fingers together beside Rick’s hip as he goes back down again, goes back to sucking with just the right pressure that is bring Rick closer and closer.

Rick squeezes his hand, holds on for dear life, and moans loudly as he arches his hips before biting his mouth closed as he remembers _quiet_. He’s getting close, so close, but he knows Daryl feels it in the twitching of his cock, the tightening of him muscles, and the increased rhythm of the snap of his hips. But Daryl doesn’t pull off, doesn’t waver. If anything, he gets more intense, goes down further, strokes himself harder, and while it’s not all the way and while Rick is not fully in him, it’s damn close enough and one thought crosses Rick’s mind--if he finishes hard enough, his come will go straight down Daryl’s throat and _fuck_ , isn’t that a thought?

It’s so much of a thought, in fact, that it pushes Rick onward just that little bit until he is well and truly fucking up into Daryl and that, combined with a little flicker of Daryl’s eyes down to Rick’s groin and then up into his gaze again, that little look that says _come on, Rick, I’m ready_ finally does it, and Rick bucks his hips forward with a shout that he swallows down into his throat.

Daryl moans around him and sucks just a tiny bit harder, pulling everything from Rick and Rick can _feel_ it, can feel himself losing it within Daryl, can feel Daryl coaxing it all out of him, drawing him out drop for drop and emotion for emotion until Rick is boneless and weak, all the tension removed from both his body and his mind. He collapses spent on the floor of the closet and after a moment of careful licking, Daryl slides up his body slowly like the pouring of hot metal into a mold, fitting Rick’s body just damn near perfectly.

Daryl smiles at Rick and Rick glances down, notices how Daryl’s clothes are now stained with his own release and can’t help grinning back, open and freeing. Daryl leans forward and kisses him, slow and soft, and Rick tastes himself in Daryl’s mouth, but beyond that, he tastes _Daryl_ and that’s more of a gift than any moment of life in this damn apocalypse has ever been. “Did I pay you back?” Daryl asks with a chuckle, his hands holding himself up from Rick’s body.

Rick grins, slides his hands up Daryl’s biceps and nods. “More,” he tells him. “I didn’t swallow.”

Daryl barks out a laugh. “You didn’t, huh? You little tease.” He kisses the side of Rick’s face and Rick can feel his smile ghosting against Rick’s own flesh. “I guess that means you owe me now, huh? You’re going to have to make up for it.”

Rick laughs and it sounds _real_ for the first time in forever. “Yeah,” he agrees, “I’ll try every damned day.”

Daryl smiles, slow like the moving of glaciers and the opening of flowers in the spring. “I’ll hold you to that.” And Rick realizes, with the same kind of smooth, slow building, that he will. That somehow, a velvet-curtained private sex room has blossomed into this, into what Rick feels is home, is safety, is the very start of the rest of his entire life.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr Links:
> 
> Note: I'm only on tumblr very lightly right now since the season is about to start (I am avoiding spoilers like the plague). The best way to contact me if you would like to is my email: MichelleAEmerlind@outlook.com! 
> 
> [MAE's Rickyl Fics and Recs](http://maerickyl.tumblr.com/): Where you can find a list of my fanfic, fanfic recs, and snippets of works in progress.  
> [Michelle A. Emerlind](http://michelleaemerlind.tumblr.com/): My general tumblr where I put stuff? And things? And just whatever I want.


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